


the Valley and the Shadow

by newandykes



Series: Long Road Home [1]
Category: Fury (2014)
Genre: Pre-Canon, also I figured I'd run with the idea that Don got his scars in a car crash before the war, also Red is basically Steve Irwin, featuring: Team Mom Boyd, tsamina mina zangalewa cause this is Africa, à la the original script
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-11-06
Packaged: 2018-02-23 23:14:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2559347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newandykes/pseuds/newandykes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Their driver tells them that his name is Don Collier and he has been sitting there since the sun came up.</i>
  <br/>
  <i>"He a tad over-eager?" says Boyd.</i>
  <br/>
  <i>"You have no idea."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	the Valley and the Shadow

 

>  " _There are my armoured regiments_ " - C.O. John Currie, gesturing to a group of twelve tanks following the Battle of El Alamein

 

**November, 1942**

They find their superior officer in a lawn chair, cigarette jammed between his teeth and another two butted out on the table beside him. Despite his stubborn immovability, the Suez Canal trickles on, clogged with equally stubborn boats - every single one of them flying a Union Jack.

Their driver tells them that his name is Don Collier and he has been sitting there since the sun came up.

"He a tad over-eager?" says Boyd. 

"You have no idea." 

The truck trundles to a stop and lets him and the others jump out. It is their first step on real African soil since they joined the war. 

"It's hard," says Grady, stumbling as he hits the dirt at a wrong angle. 

"You'll get used to it," says the driver, and then he's gone.

The trio advance over to the lawn chair, curious to see who they will be sharing a tank with for the next few months. The guy looks young, but Boyd equates that to the freshly cut hair and neatly pressed uniform, and not the hollow way his skin turns in at the cheeks. Out here, there's a big difference between year-age and battle-age. 

Grady and Gordo hand up their papers immediately, Boyd hanging back to admire at the view. Apparently, they only took Cairo a couple of weeks ago, but looking at the canal, it's easier to believe that the British have been here for years. He can even hear _The White Cliffs of Dover_ being played on a gramophone nearby. 

Collier is berating Gordo about speaking Mexican while in the field and then, suddenly, it is Boyd's turn. He hands over his papers and tries not to think too much about what they say. Collier has clean, square fingernails and clean, blond hair. Boyd would say he's never seen a battle before but there's something about the way he moves that suggests otherwise.

"You're a preacher," he says, biting down hard on the 'r's, "and a _gunner_. How's that working out for you?" 

"It's, uh." Boyd feels his throat go dry; looks to Grady for help. The a-driver shrugs his shoulders. "It's working out just fine."  

"How long have you boys been out here?" 

"They brought us in yesterday," says Gordo, "How long have _you_ been out here?"

Collier stretches his arms above his head and they hear several bones pop. He ashes his cigarette and takes his sunglasses off, revealing a pair of blue eyes that seem oddly pale compared to the rest of his sunburnt face. 

"Too long," he says. 

 

  

"Since El Alamein," Grady whispers later on, once they're settled in. 

David is just about to slay Goliath but Boyd still looks up, confusion crinkling his brow. "What?" 

The cot creaks as Grady sits down, as gleeful as a high-school bully with the dorky girl's diary. "Not even that. He's been here since they liberated the city. He flew down with the confetti and the streamers." 

"How is that even possible?"

Boyd thinks about the weary way the man showed them around their quarters, gesturing to the en suite bathroom as if he could barely raise his arm. He trudged away with the sort of sigh Boyd usually associates with a man who really wants a stiff drink. 

"Maybe he served in some other war," says Gordo. He stands in the corner, inspecting the peeling landscapes that have been hung on the walls. "This place must have been a hotel or something," he murmurs, touching one of the frames lightly.  

"What  _other_ war?" Grady cries. 

"I dunno. Somewhere in the Pacific, maybe." 

"Nuh-uh." Grady shakes his head, grin still plastered to his face. "He's as green as you or me, brother. He's supposed to have done tank school up North somewhere." 

Boyd shuts his bible, letting it slide from his fingers onto the bedspread. 

"Maybe something bad happened to him. Something back home. People join the army to get away from all that." 

"People join the army because they're fucking _stupid_ ," says Grady. 

" _I_ joined the army."

"The point still stands."  

 

 

Boyd eats dinner alone that night. For the first time in months, they can leave their quarters without speaking to their commanding officer, and Gordo and Grady are intent of taking advantage of that.

"There's this girl," Grady had explained, using expansive gestures of the hand, "from the brothel down the street. _Real_ easy. But pretty, and funny, with a real nice laugh." Grady then went on to praise the girl's other charms, as if trying to make up for calling her "easy" in the first place. 

"She probably has the clap," Gordo had shouted from in front of the mirror, where he had been fixing his shirt collar. 

"Hey, shut the fuck up!" 

Now, he sits at the small fold-out table alone, something coarse and mealy from the mess hall steaming away on his plate. Gordo had offered to take him with them (" _Just_ as a tourist," he had said, solemnly) but Boyd had declined. The standoffish way other men acted in brothels had always made him uncomfortable, and seeing the girls in them always did nothing but make him feel sad. 

Just as he's thinking about wandering down to the canal, the door flies open against the wall as Collier barges in, not so much as making eye contact with Boyd before going into the bathroom. The sound of the second door slamming reverberates around the room as Boyd slowly lowers his fork back onto the plate. 

"Sergeant Collier?" he calls, hesitantly. Then, when he receives no reply, "Don?" 

"... Yeah?" 

"Are you okay?" 

"Just peachy." 

Boyd feels a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. He looks over to the stove, where Gordo and Grady's tin wrapped meals await their unlikely return. 

"Corporal Garcia got some food from downstairs if you're hungry," he says, figuring his two friends won't be needing their portions anytime soon. 

Collier doesn't say anything so he gets up, grabs the plate and wanders over to the bathroom. The door lies ajar slightly from where it's bounced off the wall, due to the force Collier slammed it with, no doubt. The man himself sits crosslegged on the toilet seat, elbows on his knees in what Boyd would call a meditational pose. Nostrils flaring, jaw set - he's absolutely seething. 

"I think it has meat in it," Boyd says, leaning on the doorframe. He liftts the tin a little and peers inside. He doesn't bother asking what happened. If he has learnt anything from being around Grady so much, it's that the questions only serve to stoke the anger. 

He reaches across the tiny space and places the plate in Collier's hands. Collier blinks, then looks down. When he looks up again, a great deal of the tension has left his shoulders and his face is neutral. 

"Where you were training," he says, "were there any nighttime routines? Orienteering? Anything like that?" 

"No," Boyd shakes his head, "We did most of that during the day because the camp was in a residential area." 

Collier nods, absorbing that information. "For half a month," he says, slowly, "I wasn't able to sleep because of all the fighting going on out here. The sky was lit up with flares and the whole city was visible from where we were camped. It was like the 4th of July - you could see everything that was happening." He grimaces. "Every fucking thing." 

Boyd shuts his eyes. The driver had been talking about the siege since they left the airbase. Ninety kilometres in that sweltering heat and all he could think to talk about was the way the ground shook when a tank blew up nearby. Boyd was nearly sick from the horror of it all. 

"Now that we have Cairo," he says, "I suppose you'll be able to sleep easier." 

"No, no," Collier replies, wagging a finger, "You're too optimistic, Bible. They'll find some hellhole out in the middle of the desert in no time, and the moment they do they'll put us in a Stuart and send us there."

"You can't possibly believe that." 

"People are cruel, Corporal Swan. And it's about time you understood that." 

 

 

It's called Operation Torch and it's taking them round to French North Africa. Three other operations stem from Operation Torch, hitting the coast at Algiers, Oran and Casablanca, and so far only Collier knows which they're taking.

As they leave the barracks, the Brits all give them dirty looks - or, more specifically, they give Collier dirty looks.

"What's that about?" Boyd whispers.

"He didn't do El Alamein," says Gordo.  

"That's not his fault." 

Gordo shrugs. "He still didn't do it." 

Inside the pickup truck taking them to the docks, Collier explains what will happen. There's a fortress they are supposed to be taking, manned by nearly a hundred Frenchmen, but before they can do that they have to capture the beach.

"It's our primary objective to stop any heavy artillery from injuring the foot soldiers," Collier says, no longer calm but bouncing his heels on the truck's wooden floor. "Only when  _they_ make it up the beach are _we_ allowed to proceed." 

"And we capture the castle," Boyd murmurs. He looks up at Collier. "Better than some hellhole out in the middle of the desert, right?"  

Collier doesn't say anything. Boyd's not sure if he heard or not. 

 

* * *

 

It is dark, and cold, and for all the crashing waves outside the ship, Gordo can barely make out what Boyd is saying to himself. 

"- _angels charge over us to keep us in all our ways. Let no evil befall us_ -" 

They've been sat in their Stuart for over half-an-hour because somebody got the times wrong. Grady looks terrified and Collier's not too different; they are both silent, staring; Collier's cigarette hangs loosely out of his mouth and he hasn't bothered to light it. They are almost invisible in the darkness and Gordo might believe he was on his own if it wasn't for Boyd's steady muttering, and the light of the crucifix pressed to his lips. 

"- _Bless us O Lord, that we may complete our journey safely and successfully under -_ " 

Suddenly, a great siren goes up, loud and sharp. "- _under Your ever watchful care,_ " Boyd finishes, tucking the metal back under his shirt. 

"Places, now," Collier whispers.  

Gordo's fingers curl tightly around the controls, gloves creaking like old driftwood. Grady crawls in beside him, clapping Gordo on the back as he does so.  

The bay doors open and suddenly the tank is lit up orange with light; not daylight, but the fires burning further up the beach, behind the fortress. 

"There goes the element of surprise," says Collier. He doesn't bother to be quiet now, and though he sounds stern enough they can all tell he's worried. 

A second siren rings out.

"Go," Collier says, just as Gordo pushes down gently on the gearstick.

The tank rolls forward after a short jolt, travelling down the gangway and hitting the sand with less force than Gordo would have expected. Rapid gunfire hits the outside of the Stuart like rain on a tin roof but Gordo doesn't stop moving, conscious of the other tanks making their way out of the ship. The  _thump-thump-thump_ of the foot soldiers running between them and the other two tanks is comforting. At least they are not on their own. 

"Hey Boyd, you see those howitzers?" calls Grady. 

"Where?" 

Now at a safe distance from the fighting, Gordo brings the tank to a standstill.  

"Big row of em. Along the left side of the fortress." 

The gunner's eyes are firmly stuck to the periscope. Gordo can almost pinpoint the exact moment Grady's words ring true - Boyd's face falls.

"Yeah," he says, "Yeah, Grady, I see them." 

" _Caboose_ ," Collier says into their radio, "This is  _Ave-Maria_. We have sights on heavy artillery west of the kasbah. Do you want us to take them out?" 

"Roger that _Ave-Maria_."

"Oh dear Lord," Boyd chokes out, the words barely skirting a whisper.

"Corporal Garcia, take us round that sandbank and through that scrub," says Collier, making a little circular gesture with his hand. 

As Gordo takes them up and over, something heavy slams into their tracks and makes the tank lurch. It makes a horrible revving noise before belching, then stalling altogether. 

"Fuck," Grady hisses, rubbing the spot where his head whacked against the metal roofing. 

"Put your helmet on," Gordo says. 

"There's a canon up on the front battlements," murmurs Boyd. 

Collier tells him to take it out and Boyd shakes his head. "No, no it's too big. Get one - get one of the others to do it." 

"Jesus Christ," Collier whimpers, using the back of his hand to viciously wipe at his eyes. 

Gordo tries desperately to spur the tank forward again and is relieved to find it working. They crash through the olive trees and bushes surrounding the beach.  _The goddess Athena,_ he thinks to himself, reciting from his sister's old art book,  _is almost always depicted as carrying an olive branch. The olive branch represents an offering of peace, as well as a sign of victory. It is worn by brides on their wedding day, a common custom, especially along the Mediterranean coast._

Suddenly Boyd is firing the canon and any suspicions Gordo had about the preacher's capabilities fly out the driver's hatch. Boyd fires round after round into the fortress's battlements, bringing them crashing down around the Frenchmen's ears. One man manages to get to his howitzer before Boyd can deal with them, the shot hitting their turret basket. Boyd doesn't bat an eyelash. 

But he can't not react to the large tank making its way round the side of the fortress. He stops firing and reaches for the traverse wheel. 

"It's a Char!" he roars, "Flank left!"

Grady sees it too and takes up the cry. Grady has always been cocky - and the  _Ave-Maria_ is a fine little tank - but the man knows when he's outgunned. It's what makes him a good soldier.

As they turn towards the beach, Boyd spins the turret so the canon is facing back the way they came. Gordo watches the .88 fire bounce off the Char's thick hull without so much as leaving a dent, and feels his heart sink into his stomach.

Collier is in the back, working the radio. " _Caboose,_  this is  _Ave-Maria._ We -" he drops the radio into the bow. Grady retrieves it for him quickly. "- We have sights on a Char B1 on the west side of the kasbah, making its way towards y- _s_ _hit_."   

They take a hit from the French tank that makes Gordo's drivingback to the sandbank pointless. They practically _fly_ there. 

By the time  _Caboose_ and Co. come back down the beach to save them, the Stuart is on its last legs, and Gordo is pretty sure someone has had an accident but he doesn't mention it. Mentioning it would probably only garner a sharp telling off from Collier. Unless it was him who did the deed and - judging from the beaten down look on the man's face - Gordo wouldn't put it past him. 

Afterwards, he watches as Boyd gently takes the radio out of the sergeant's shaking hands, whispering something about going up top to get some air.  

Grady is still gripping the controls, his knuckles white. A little blood trickles down his head and Gordo starts to search for the first-aid kit.

"Don't bother," the a-driver says, and Gordo doesn't. Boyd is mother within their little group and Gordo wouldn't know what to do with a first-aid kit anyway. 

So instead he thinks of famous seascapes; Ivan Aivazovsky, William Turner, and his absolute favourite: Friedrich's  _Monk by the Sea_ ; artists from the other side of the world to here. He thinks of Athena with her olive branch, and if victory is really a beautiful thing. 

 

* * *

  **December, 1942**

After Operation Torch, they spend a majority of their time travelling from town to town across Morocco, flushing out any Vichy-French who felt like sticking around. They always report back to the kasbah for the mission debrief and a warm meal. Don gets better at killing the way dogs get better at fetching: quickly, with rewards. Only in Don's case, the act of killing is a reward in itself. Boyd discovers that, above all else, the man  _hates_ Nazis. 

Nobody outside _Ave-Maria_ knows how badly Don cracked under the pressure of their first mission, but plenty suspect it. They go real quiet when he walks into a room and then real loud once he's left. So Don spends a lot of time in the village itself, looking for odd jobs to do, things to make him feel useful. He liberates a few horses from their stables, leading them down to a well for water. The kids seem to like him but Don doesn't talk to them at all. They follow him around at his heels, chanting "Baba-Harb! Baba-Harb!" and he goes on stiffly ignoring them.

Boyd watches from the kasbah battlements and wonders when he started thinking of the sergeant as Don and not as Collier.

"Probably when he shat himself," Gordo says.

He hadn't realised he'd been thinking out loud.

Along with shitting his pants and not liking children (or Nazis), Don doesn't say much. He can talk a lot, when prompted, but he never says anything substantial, anything lending an eye into his past. This trait manifests itself terribly when an abandoned mine damages one of their tracks in the middle of nowhere and Don gets down to help Grady pull them out from under the sprocket.

They've been camping out in the desert for a week now and have abandoned basic dress code. Don's wearing some kind of loose jumper and, bending over to dig away at the sand underneath the tank, the collar slips back a little to reveal what looks like scars. Boyd pretends he doesn't see them but later on he asks Grady if he's noticed anything odd about Don's back. 

"No," he says. Then, "Why?" 

Boyd says he must have imagined something but he knows he hasn't. He feels like he has seen something he was not supposed to see. 

He feels this again when they attack a retreating column of Vichy tanks, and Don is laughing like a madman the whole while. 

"Merry Christmas!" he whoops, dancing around in circles. "Merry Christmas, Bible!" 

For the first time since he landed in Africa, Boyd realises that life does, for all intents and purposes, _go_ _on._

 

* * *

  **January, 1943**

They accompany the 1st Army in the west, fresh from their defeat at Djedeida. Among these solemn faced British men, the tank full of healthy Americans puts them in a sour mood. Gordo remembers the way the soldiers had looked at Don in Cairo. They look at him the same way here.

All this changes when they come out of Sidi Bou Zid, only to be met by Germans in the Faïd Pass. Suddenly, everyone wants to be friends. 

Boyd plugs away at the .88 but it's no use. 

"This is  _Ave-Maria_ ," Don says, "Reversing." 

Gordo brings the tank around in a wide brush stroke worthy of a Van Gough piece.

This is their first defeat.  

 

* * *

**February, 1943**

By midday the 21st  _Deutsches Afrikakorps_ seizes the Maizila Pass, stopping any Allied forces from advancing towards the 10th. If Don was annoyed before, he is livid now. 

" _Fucking_ Krauts!" he shouts, kicking around the turret basket like a bull in a pen. "Krauts with their cocksucker panzers!" 

"Turn the radio off," Boyd murmurs. Don doesn't listen so he's forced to reach across and wrestle the thing out of his clenched fists. "You'll pop everyone's eardrums with the racket you're making."  

"Oh, go back to Iowa, Bible," Grady spits. 

Boyd falls silent, slipping back into his seat. Grady feels a little twinge of regret. He's just tense, like Don - they're all tense. They've been on sentry duty since yesterday, looking at the same old rocky cliff face for what feels like an eternity while they swelter away inside the Stuart's hull. Outside, the sun hangs high in the sky, burning with the fierce intensity that comes with an early Spring.

Swallowing dryly, he fingers the sand out of his eyes and uses his shirt sleeve to wipe it away from his nose. That's another thing about Africa: there's always sand somewhere. 

He looks at Don, head cradled in his hands, perched in front of the coax gun where Boyd would usually be sat. Then he looks to Gordo, curled on his side and fast asleep, and to Boyd, who looks as if he's heading that way with the dark bags under his eyes.

There is no longer any muffled radio activity to be heard. Driving up to to the Pass earlier that day, their antenna had been shot up by a couple of Germans with a howitzer. The guy captaining their leading tank had promised to radio base for a replacement as soon as he got the chance, but Boyd highly doubted Fredendall was going to allow them to send someone out on his own to bring it to them. That or the guy just hadn't bothered. His name is Van der Something and he acts like a total WASP, and as much as Grady believes in camaraderie and brotherhood... he hates him for it. It reminds him of the boys who used to beat him up in elementary school, before he got big. 

At least their tank-to-tank frequency still works. 

"I feel like a roasted lamb," Gordo says.

Oh. He'd been sure Gordo was asleep.  

"I'd rather roast in here than burn out there," Don mutters. 

Grady looks round at Don again and is treated to the sight of their gunner gently handing their sergeant back the radio, like a little kid being made to apologise. 

Grady's about to say sorry to him himself but the sound of an .88 slamming into them stops him short. Suddenly, Don is alive, jumping out from behind the coax and all but shoving Boyd back into place there. 

" _Romeo_  this is _Ave-Maria_. We have signs action in the North Pass - sounds like a group of armoured mediums... _Romeo_ do you copy?" 

Don receives nothing but static in return. Grady exchanges a worried glance with Gordo. 

" _Romeo_ ," Don repeats, a little more aggressively now, "Do - you - copy?" 

Still nothing. Boyd straightens up, already fiddling with the clasp on the hatch. 

"Whoa-whoa-whoa," Grady says, looking from him to the radio and back, "What are you doing?" 

"They must have knocked something else out of place." 

The tank shudders again as they take another hit, this time to the bow. 

" _A la verga_ ," comes the call.

"No Mexican in my tank Gordo."  

Grady stares at Don in abject horror, wondering how the sergeant can just sit there while one of their best puts himself in the line of fire. 

He can feel the blood pumping around his head as a hail of bullets spatters over them. This must be Shütte's men, split off from the 10th division. There will be many of them - too many to take.

He remembers his father's portable radio back home in Arkansas - the one he always kept on the deck. When it cut out during thunderstorms it would be up to Grady to fix it, his father's abilities only extending towards farming. "If you weren't so dead set on that car shop of yours," his father had said, "you could always be a radioman."

Without thinking, he pulls Boyd back into the tank by his gun holster and pushes himself up, out the hatch. 

"What are you doing?" Don cries from inside the tank. 

Grady swings his legs up over the rim of the hatch and slides down behind the turret, right as their bow takes another hit. If he's not quick, it'll be Gordo who ends up dead and not him. 

He stares helplessly at the base of the antennae, ripped out of its sockets, and is faced with the sort of hopelessness Don must have felt outside El Alamein. Though, leaning in close, he realises that most of the wires within the casing itself have remained intact, and it is only one large, copper one that had been broken. 

Pulling a glove off with his teeth, Grady drops to the ground before setting to work. The panzers are firing at them from somewhere higher up in the valley - maybe even from the cliff itself, and they will not be able to see him if he stays low. 

With the two ends of the copper wire platted back together crudely, he presses the button on his in-tank com - the only piece of radio equipment that has been able to remain intact today. 

"Try calling Van der Dick and his boys," Grady shouts. 

"Roger that, Private," says Don. Grady hears him switch to the radio before he takes his finger off the button, and is relieved to hear the beginnings of what sounds like a two-way conversation. 

Hoisting himself back onto the rear of the tank, he's suddenly knocked off his feet and thrown back onto the ground. He feels something very sharp pressing against his head and there's a bell ringing in his ears. 

"Coon-Ass -" the com is still crackling in his ear, but he must have landed on it badly because Don's voice sounds disjointed and weird. "Coon-Ass - what are - Gra- _Grady_ _?_ " 

The sand is suddenly intensely hot and feels like it's keeping him stuck to the ground. The sky is very white. Then, it's very black. 

 

 

He wakes up in Djebel Hamra. He had woken up before that and Boyd had told him to go back to sleep. The quick, unsteady movement of the truck feels foreign. They've lost a lot of good tanks and Grady doesn't know which is scarier: the fact that Don isn't yelling about it, or the fact that he can't see. 

"It's hysterical blindness," the camp doctor will tell him later, and Grady will say, "But I'm _not_ hysterical."  

He feels the man pat him on the shoulder. "It's not your fault, son." Grady thinks about what a piss-weak thing to say that is.

Boyd and Don have to walk him over to the sick tent like boy scouts helping an old lady cross the road. Then, Don has to wait while a nurse pokes and prods Grady on a cold metal table. It gives him convenient time to chew the private out. 

"Bible is the technician here. You should have stayed in the tank."

"Would you rather Bible be the one lying on the table right now?"

"Bible knows what he's doing," Don snaps, "Bible thinks things through before he does them - Bible -"

"Why don't you just _marry_ him then?" 

The nurse clears her throat: _no fighting in the operating theatre._ Then she gives Don the four-one-one on the a-driver's condition. 

"He's suffered a head wound. Probably shrapnel, judging from the spreading. There's also some bruising to his chest but the tank absorbed most of the blast. It's treatable."

"What about the fact that I'm fucking _blind?_ " Grady deadpans. 

"It will fade, eventually," she says, "But for now it's important that you stay put." 

"Stay put," Don echoes sternly. 

Grady can hear the smile in the girl's voice. "Something tells me you boys are going to be out of business for a while, and right now, the safest place Private Travis can be is right here." As she says this, there is an explosion nearby, causing Grady jerk into a sitting position, hands searching in vain for his gun. 

She drops her voice an octave when she says, "Just keep him away from anything that goes boom."

 

 

They take turns sitting vigil by Grady's bedside. Boyd in the mornings, because he is a morning person, which is so typical of him. Gordo in the afternoons; he describes the soldiers coming and going with all the detail of a Rococo art piece - the kind where every little bow is shaded and penciled in according to the way the light's coming in through the window. Fragonard or Boucher.

Don comes by in the evening and often stays well into the night. He gets chatty with the nurse who, he discovers, attended the same kindergarten as his little brother. Grady likes to hear them talk about things back home because it keeps him grounded, even when all he can see is foggy white. 

"She's real sweet," Don says one night, the chair beside the bed creaking as he falls into it. "Her name's Isabelle and she could probably drink you under the table." 

"Sounds like a match made in heaven," Grady murmurs. 

"Nah. I joined the army to get away from all that stuff." 

Grady doesn't know what he means by "all that stuff." He isn't sure he wants to. He thinks back to that first day in Cairo; about what Boyd had said.  _Maybe something bad happened to him._

"What's it like?" Don asks. 

Grady chews on the end of his cigarette. "What's what like?"

"Being blind." 

He thinks for a moment. "Fucking fantastic." He goes to take the cigarette out of his mouth but ends up poking himself in the eye. 

"Oh really now?" Don stands up, the chair creaking again. There's a hand at Grady's shoulder, thumping it. "Well, keep it up. We're getting a paid vacation because of you. And I hear they're sending us one of those old Shermans." 

"Yeah, I'll make a note to do this more often." 

This kind of talk goes on for a week or two, during which they loose Sidi Bou Zid and Don gets a whole lot quieter. 

On what Grady thinks is Good Sunday - he can hear Boyd singing under his breath - Fredendall sends them a new a-driver - which either means Grady is secretly going to die, or they have a new tank. And judging from the fact that he has already started to regain his sight, he goes with the latter. He can just make out the man's big, barrel chest as he joins them at the bedside. 

"Hey," he says, probably shaking Boyd's hand. "Frank Capman. They sent me down from Cairo."

"Oooh," Grady murmurs, grinning dumbly, "He's a Bayou boy."

"From Baton Rouge, actually."

"But I'd be right in saying you've prolly wrestled an alligator or two in your lifetime, wouldn't I?"

"Never even seen one."

"Well we'll soon change that," Grady says, "Hey, Don." 

There's a little shuffling. 

"Morning sunshine," the sergeant says. 

"Let's take the Red Stick newbie here down to the Nile," Grady says, "Set him up with an alligator."

"Nile's crocodiles Coon-Ass."

"Fuck you too Don."

 

 

Grady gets his eyesight back. Just like that. He's halfway through being fed lunch by Isabelle, and Gordo's going on about Michelangelo painting dicks on the Sistine Chapel when everything snaps back into focus, making him choke. Don just about shits rainbows when he finds out, he's so happy, though he tries not to be so obvious about how desperate he was to leave. 

They will be accompanying the XXX Corps to the Mareth line come March, being one of the few surviving tanks from Sidi Bou Zid. They're calling it Operation Pugilist: Medenine first, then Gabès if they're successful. 

"Which we will be," Don proclaims, shoving Grady along like he still can't see. 

Grady's never been gladder to see a tank in his lifetime. It's big - bigger than their old Stuart - and sturdy looking. It's clean and green, but, as Don leads him around to the turret hatch, a splash of white catches his eye. Someone's graffitied the canon barrel. " _Fury_."Don catches him looking at it and murmurs, in a careful tone of voice, "Previous owners did that. They all died up in Oran during Operation Torch."

Gordo thinks the tank is haunted and there's a group of ghosts watching over them somewhere.

"Don't be so morbid," Boyd murmurs. Below him in the bow, Frank - who they've taken to calling Red - grins. Grady's glad they're all getting along. Grady himself expected there to be some animosity between he and Red, what with Red replacing him as a-driver, but Red's been nothing but gracious about it.   

"We were lucky the Krauts only used phosphorous," Don says, swinging off the canon, "Otherwise we would be waiting another week for this baby. Those kids were idiots." 

"And that's respect," Gordo tells Red in a serious voice, "You don't make up lies about the dead. Right Bible?" 

"Right." 

"You done seminary Corporal Swan?" Red asks. 

"Bible here was already preaching at 23," says Grady. 

"And now he's here," Don chimes in. He's not really talking to them though. He's doing that thing he does when he's preparing for a fight - staring off into space, muttering to himself. 

"There's no place I'd rather be," Boyd drawls. The sad thing is, Grady's can't tell if he's joking anymore. Boyd's been speaking less and less lately. 

 

* * *

  **March, 1943**  

They hang around the back of the group, letting the Brits take care of most of the action. They are really just there in case any of the enemy forces try to escape Zarat and make a run for it. If anything, they should be in Cairo with the rest of the American artillery, awaiting their next orders, but Boyd is happy that they have been given the opportunity to get at home in the new tank. 

Gordo brings it to a gentle halt on a sand dune, a couple of miles away from the heavy action. Don stretches out his legs, then reaches for the radio.  

" _Piccadilly_ , this is Sergeant Collier in _Love_ _1-6._ We are currently in position."  _  
_

"Copy that Sergeant Collier," comes the plummy reply, "And can I say it's an honour to have you and your boys with us today?"

"You may." 

Don disconnects the radio and slots it back onto the shelf. 

"Bible, do me a favour." Don taps the periscope with a pointed look. "Put an eye on that entrance at 1 o'clock. The one they're guarding with the howitzer." 

"Why?" Boyd asks, presses his face into the periscope. 

"Just in case they decide to take _Fury_ here for a ride." 

" _Fury_ ," Red murmurs, "I like that." 

"Better than  _Love 1-6_ ," Grady mutters. 

 

 

They meet up with the Long Range Desert Group after a particularly embarrassing defeat. The 15th panzer division completely destroyed their pocket outside Zarat. The LRDG tells them that there is another point along the line they will be able to enter in from: the Tebaga Gap. But they leave that to the New Zealand Corps. 

Grady jumps down into the sand to evaluate the damage done by Don's howitzer, drawing a curious crowd of Brits.

"I can't  _fix_  these!" he shouts, gesturing to the ripped up tracks. He curses, loudly and imaginatively, and manages to scare the Brits away. 

"Non Vi Sed Arte," Red mutters, stretching his hands high above his head so that his shoulder blades pop. 

Gordo gives him a curious look and he adds: "Not by strength - by guile. It's their motto." 

"Looks like you have some competition Gord," says Don, already lifting himself out of the turret hatch, "Trini here wants to be an art historian." 

" _Dale cabron!_ " Gordo yells at him, and then mutters, once he's disappeared, " _Culero_." 

"Filthy, filthy man," Red murmurs, lighting a cigarette. 

Boyd, desperate for a breath of fresh air, leaves the tank as well. Red follows, and together they sit atop the turret box. In the middle of such a vast wasteland, there might as well be no war at all. Boyd is suddenly immensely thankful to be fighting out here in North Africa, and not in some muddy trench in France, like his grandfather during the Somme. 

Grady and Don are arguing over the tracks, Grady saying he can't do it and Don insisting that he can. He begins to slap the Arkansan around the ears and Red laughs, blowing smoke out his nose. 

"Adorable." 

Don kicks Grady in the shin and Grady finally gives in. "Okay, okay, okay - jesus, fuck, I'll do it." 

"There's a good soldier," says Don. He stalks over to Boyd and Red. "Those boys from the Desert Group have offered us a lift back to Cairo. You three game?" 

"They don't call them the Libyan Taxi Service for nothing!" shouts Gordo from down in the bow. 

"What about the tank?" Red asks. 

"There's a recovery group coming round in half an hour to pick it up. They'll have it back tomorrow for Coon-Ass here to fix."  

"And what then?"

Don shrugs. "We wait around for our next orders. I dunno about you but I'm looking forward to a good long sun-bake by the Nile."

"Red can finally show us some of those gator-wresting moves," Grady calls.

"Crocodiles, Coon-Ass." 

"Fuck you very much Don." 

Red smiles. 

 

* * *

**April, 1943**

Cairo disturbs Don. Nothing happens in Cairo, and with nothing happening, all the little things that  _are_ happening make themselves all the more apparent. Like the way Gordo's gotten more and more reckless with his liquor, sometimes drinking before they go into battle. And the look Grady gets in his eye sometimes, like he's still lying in that operating theatre outside Djebel Hamra with his vision eighty-sixed. When Don sees them chatting to each other from their cots, all he can picture is two patients lying in full body casts, each talking about how stupid the other was. 

And Don thinks about how good Boyd was with people, in the beginning; how he would always be chatting with someone, looking for a way to help out. Now there are prolonged periods of time where Boyd doesn't say  _anything._ Sometimes Don will find him standing off on his own and when he asks what he's doing, the gunner is confused and sluggish, as if he has been asleep. 

Don might be a little fucked up, but he doubts the war has effected him the way it has effected the other three. Especially Boyd. 

So they talk more and more about life back home - anything to keep the guy grounded. Don finds out a lot. Boyd's mother used to give private cooking classes to the rich women in their neighbourhood and now she makes prize winning cakes at the annual fête. Boyd's father died when he was around fifteen and he's the reason Boyd had wanted to go through seminary in the first place. There are uncles, aunts and cousins in Wisconsin; grandparents in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania; there were even great-grandparents out in Mexico once, which is why Boyd gets along so well with Gordo. Gordo is still seeing the sun setting out in Tijuana, and out here people will latch onto anything that reminds them of home. 

"I haven't been back to Tijuana in years," Gordo said, "because Papá gave up his job there to move to Chicago. We were going to get Adelita her art degree but then the war came and -"

Don had told Gordo to shut up because he was depressing everyone. And he was.  

Red is like a breath of fresh air to them all; new to the war but smart enough to know not to step out of line. But the way Red looks at Don, all pity and understanding, sets Don's teeth on edge. Red acts like he has something on all of them. Maybe he does. 

"You never told me what Baba-Harb means." 

"Sorry, what?" Don says, blinking. They're standing on a bridge overlooking the Suez, heads bowed with the sun scorching across the backs of their necks. They don't play  _The White Cliffs of Dover_ here anymore. 

"Baba-Harb." 

"Oh, _I_ don't know." 

"Father-War," Red murmurs, because Red was going to get a degree in languages. Just like Adelita Garcia was going to get a degree in arts. He stands on the opposite side of the bridge to them, arms thrown over the railing with his feet extended before him. He squints at them through the sun. "What's "Father-War" got to do with anything?" he asks. 

"It's what the kids were calling him back in Casablanca."

"Shit," Red laughs, ducking his head, "Wow. Like you're their War Daddy or something."

"Don doesn't like children," Boyd mutters. 

"I do so." 

They turn back to the river, just as a big old steamer passes bellow them, belting smoke. Boyd pulls him back, coughing, and Don thinks that tomorrow he could have orders in his pocket, sending all five of them anywhere: France, Belgium. The fucking Pacific. 

He thinks about that line from the bible. The one about the valley and the shadow.  _Things will be alright,_ he thinks, and they will. Just as long as they stick together. 

But Don's beginning to wonder just how long they're going to be able to keep that up. 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The first battle is obviously highly fictionalised, but a lot of it is based on Operation Goalpost. Also I doubt command would have allowed Don and his boys to just wander freely around Africa willy-nilly.  
> Actually this whole thing is highly fictionalised now that I think about it.


End file.
